A book club discussion of Curious Incident

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I led a faculty book club discussion of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time yesterday. The book had been my suggestion. I included discussion of my two sons; everyone already knows they have autism. I also discussed the debate here, some time ago, regarding whether Christopher is HFA or an aspie. I made no mention of my own self-understanding.

Some interesting things arose:

1) Unusually for these meetings, everyone had read the book at least once (some twice or partially twice).
2) The discussion went in both directions, looking at the protagonist's autism and at the motivation and action of the plot. I was afraid it would hang up on issues of autism alone.
3) There was only one person in the dozen or so who thought of autism as a potentially curable illness.
4) The central question that arose was the degree to which Christopher or either of his parents may have developed during the novel. I rose the question of whether or not Christopher's assumption that, since he could get himself to London on a train and find his mother, he could, therefore, move to another town, go to university, and eventually be independent was necessarily a valid one. Discussion was lively.

I thought that intelligent people would enjoy this voyage into a different planet, and I was right. A really good day.

I just picked this book up today. I like it. As to whether I think that Christopher has AS or HFA, that is a very good question. I see a lot of similarities in behavior between Christopher and my youngest (who was originaly diagnosed with Autism) He is high functioning Kanner's. Since he is pretty social we are apt to believe that PDD probably fits him better. Anyways, the statement on page 29 "This is because I do not always do what I am told. And this is because when people tell you what to do it is usually confusing and does not make sense."
My son will do this especially when the school staff or daycare people "have a talk with him" after he hits someone or runs off. They tell him things like "you cannot hit so and so," But they fail to tell him that if the other person has pushed him or got into his face what to do instead.
I haven't finished the book but will post again when I am done with it.

I enjoyed the book myself. While never quite like Christopher, I really did see myself in him.

I think Christopher is MFA myself, but much further down the spectrum than Aspie. For comparison, Lou in the Speed of Dark could be considered Aspie, and Lone in More Than Human (1952 but probably still in print - it's a classic) - is LFA.

Note that Theodore Sturgeon takes 2 pages out of a hundred page novel to, basically, explain that, Lone is NOT ret*d, but he totally lacked the vocabulary to explain what he described so well.